Layer transition info not being kept

[Justin Clift]

If I save a project and it have layers with "fade-in" and "fade-out", the program will lose the values of this fields when I load the saved project.

Reported by piponazo:

  http://www.salasaga.org/forum/index.php/topic,18.0.html

[Dilomo (ankere)]

I can confirm this bug on my Ibex!

[Dilomo (ankere)]

I was making a project to show ppl how to install my theme but everytime I save and close the program the transitions are lost when I resume work. I attach it here.

By the way why don't you have a short term road map and a approximate release date for your next version. I think the program is very very interesting and I would like to help make it bug free at least with it current functionality. I will report a few more bugs in LP.

One suggestion to make saving faster: Make the propertis of a slide xml based with only the image exported as binarydata so if you haven't changed the the picture to save only the xml data. That will make it a lot more useful if yo save often (because the program crashes). Or make the program more stable you know ;)

[Justin Clift (justinclift)]

Thanks. :)

Are you using 32 bit or 64 bit Ibex?

Good idea with the road map, but I'm not sure what to put on it just yet. My present focus, and what I've been working on exclusively for the past few weeks, is writing the online delivery system. Which is still in just very early stages, and going to take a few more weeks of effort. :(

Once I've got that done, then I reckon I'll be able to take a step back, look at the big picture again, and do a road map. :)

[Dilomo (ankere)]

Online delivery system! Can you tell me more? That's why you need a roadmap ;)

Thanks for the reply.

[Dilomo (ankere)]

Well forgot to say that I'm using 32bit system.

[Justin Clift (justinclift)]

Changing back to new, as I haven't been able to get this happening.

Suspect it may have been caused by memory corruption due to bug # 249182.

Are you ok to try out Alpha 5 when it's released this weekend, and check if it is still happening?

[ubernissen (l-launchpad-ubernissen-dk)]

Have the same bug on 2 different installations, Ubuntu 8.04 32bit and Ubuntu 8.10 64bit, running on separate hardware. Both installed using apt-get.
And the immediate start/exit have no effect, the element stays visible until end of slide, regardless of Display time.

[Justin Clift (justinclift)]

Hi,

Does this happen consistently, or just occasionally?

Asking because I haven't been able to reproduce it on any of my test platforms (both 32 and 64 bit), and neither has a friend that was also doing some testing a while back. :(

So, wondering how often this occurs, etc.

[Justin Clift (justinclift)]

Also to aid in figuring out where it's going wrong... are you able to take a look in the saved project file (it's text), and see if the value is being saved in there?

[ubernissen (l-launchpad-ubernissen-dk)]

I noticed when I started my current Salasaga project, that a single slide with only one Text layer and one Highlight, saved and opened correctly. But after 2 slides it started going wrong.
It is consistent and happens when a project file is opened. The transitions are gone, so when the project is saved, it's permanent.
Attached tar.gz file contains 2 project files:
One while the project is open and the transitions are gone in Salasaga, but not saved.
And one after the transitions are gone and saved.

Please notice, that Salasaga adjusts the slide duration value accordingly.
Try opening the OpenSOVS - Projects before.salasaga file and see if it happens.

[Justin Clift (justinclift)]

Looking into this now.

For me, opening the "OpenSOVS - Projects before" project works, showing the fade outs. Then saving it, and opening it again... the transitions are still there.

However, there is obviously a problem, as for the "OpenSOVS - Projects after" project, the fade outs are simply missing.

Some thoughts here:

a) Ubuntu 8.x has an older version of Salasaga available for it, being the Alpha 4 version. Guessing that's the version you are using?

     If so, then what _might_ be causing it is one of the bugs that caused internal memory corruption for Salasaga's data structures, mainly when exporting to swf.

     Those bugs were fixed for the alpha 5 release.

     Three possible things to try. :)

     1. Launch salasaga from the command line, with the "-d" command line argument. It's for debugging and will then generate log messages for specific things. It should also display any errors that occur while saving/loading.

        If you capture that log output to a file for a session where the save/load goes bad, then attach it here, that could providing direct info as to what it going on.

     2. Does this missaving only occur after you've generated a swf file? i.e. if you start up Salasaga fresh, but don't export to swf, does it still occur? That would mean it's very likely one of the memory corruption bugs, already fixed in alpha 5. (hopefully this is it)

b) Do you have any inclination to compile a newer version of Salasaga yourself and try that?

i.e. Salasaga alpha 5, or a more recently snapshot of the sourcecode?

There are good instructions online for doing this here. Pretty straight forward:

  http://www.salasaga.org/wiki/index.php/HowToInstallOnUbuntu

If not, then the newer releases of Salasaga are (already) available for the next Ubuntu release, which is only a few weeks away. Not sure if you are considering upgrading though.

Does any of that help?

[ubernissen (l-launchpad-ubernissen-dk)]

Yes, both installations are Alpha 4 version, so it is possibly caused by the internal memory corruption.
But starting from command line with -d only show this:
Debugging mode, errors will be shown on stdout.
Program path: 'salasaga'
Directory base: '.'
Icon path: //usr/share/salasaga/icons/72x72
Path to mouse pointer image: //usr/share/salasaga/icons/scalable/pointers/standard.svg

And that's with a fresh started installation, no swf export or anything, only opened the project file. And Salasaga shows none of the Fade Out's from the project file.
Strange that it happens when opening a file and not when saving, which is the more "normal" way these values gets lost.

I will compile the Alpha 5 version within a day or two and how that goes.
Meanwhile the list of other bugs I have, stays with me, just in case they are closed in the Alpha 5 version.

[Justin Clift (justinclift)]

No worries, please definitely let me know if it's fixed in Alpha 5.

For the other bugs, these are the ones that went into the Alpha 5:

# Bug #249182: error when making SWF
https://bugs.launchpad.net/salasaga/+bug/249182

# Bug #315731: Crash/image distortion on changing the zoom level
https://bugs.launchpad.net/salasaga/+bug/315731

# Bug #246786: Some PNG images not loading correctly
https://bugs.launchpad.net/salasaga/+bug/246786

# Bug #301067: Help→About should be in standard position
https://bugs.launchpad.net/salasaga/+bug/301067

Not a huge list, but the first one was made up of several, the 2nd was critical, the 3rd was important, and the 4th was just really easy to do. :)

There's also the development log online, updated fairly often again recently, showing the areas being focused on:

  http://www.salasaga.org/index.php/developers/development-log

If you see that an area is being worked on, you might as well point out thoughts/suggestions/bugs in relation to it, as it's already under focus and being changed. :)

[ubernissen (l-launchpad-ubernissen-dk)]

Hmm, I compiled the salasaga-0.8.0.alpha5 on Ubuntu 8.10 kernel 2.6.27-11-generic and there is no improvement in relation to the Fade In/Out bug.
All requirements for Alpha-5 are met, but no dice, sorry!

But I tested the 4 bugs you listed:

#249182: No luck reproducing this after 6 different tries, so I appears to be fixed.

#246786: Tried this one with different PNG saves 8 and 24/alpha, without any problems, so this also appears to be fixed.

#301067: Ironically, Help now clings on to the rest of the menu.

#315731: This one is bad, really bad. Tried changing zoom level 5-6 times before it hit, which it did without remorse, slowly crashing my laptop. Nothing could prevent it, as it just drained the power. Had to cut off the power!
No log anywhere, so I tried running salasaga -d > salasaga.debug to capture sdtout in case of another crash. But after 12-15 times resulting in nothing, I tried without -d and sure enough it crashed again. Only entry in salasaga.debug is:
 Debugging mode, errors will be shown on stdout.

 Program path: 'salasaga'

 Directory base: '.'

 Icon path: //usr/local/share/salasaga/icons/72x72

 Path to mouse pointer image: //usr/local/share/salasaga/icons/scalable/pointers/standard.svg

 Path to toolbar 'Capture Screenshots' icon: '//usr/local/share/salasaga/icons/scalable/capture.svg'

It smells like a for/while loop running wild!

At this time I will have to find some other software for my projects, but I will keep on trying Salasaga, as it's potential is interesting.

/Martin

[Justin Clift (justinclift)]

Damn (on many levels).

With the transitions being lost, that's not good news. So, this bug remains open. :/

With bug #315731, that's also really, really non-optimal.

Sounds like you're right, and it then left something running in the background consuming cpu. What happened when you tried to kill the process? That should have stopped it right there. :(

And yes, please keep trying out Salasaga, as we're making decent progress in lots of areas. Looks like it's still not where it needs to be though. (sigh)

[ubernissen (l-launchpad-ubernissen-dk)]

If I start Salasaga from command line and hit Control+c when disaster happens, it's effect is not perceptible. Feels like jumping from an aircraft already spinning to the ground :-(

As I wrote, Salasaga has potential and I have a few features/tools in mind, that could ease it's use. I will post them soon, then you can see if it usable.

Remember that from damn, damned and damnation, damnedest isn't far away :-)

[Philippe DUBRULLE (fredphil91)]

I also lose the fade-in and fade-out properties in a salasaga project (after I close salasage and then reopen my project).

But this happens only for decimal values of the fade duration (if I put a fade-in and/or fade-out of 1 second, close and reopen salasaga, everything is fine ; but if I use 0,5 as duration, the fade value doesn't come back (it comes back with a 0 value) when re-opening the salasaga project).

[Justin Clift (justinclift)]

Thanks Philippe, that could be just the information needed in order to reproduce the bug.

So far, I'd not been able to reproduce the bug, so hadn't been able to find a fix.

However, the decimal point aspect wasn't something I'd considered. That might just do the trick, so I can see what is going on.

Out of curiosity, which system locale setting (French?) is your PC using?

[Justin Clift (justinclift)]

Thanks Philippe, the info about the decimal values very much helped. After changing my environment to use Danish, the problem was easy to replicate and then find the cause.

It was caused by an incoming validation function not using the comma character correctly. Now fixed in latest source code, and this will be in the alpha 6 release.

[Justin Clift (justinclift)]

Hi Philippe,

Not sure if you've seen, but this bug (and a heap of others, including
some other serious ones) are fixed now.

Would you have a bit of time to try out the latest development snapshot?

   http://www.salasaga.org/downloads/alpha6_dev/salasaga_20091116.tar.bz2

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

Philippe DUBRULLE wrote:
> I also lose the fade-in and fade-out properties in a salasaga project
> (after I close salasage and then reopen my project).
>
> But this happens only for decimal values of the fade duration (if I put
> a fade-in and/or fade-out of 1 second, close and reopen salasaga,
> everything is fine ; but if I use 0,5 as duration, the fade value
> doesn't come back (it comes back with a 0 value) when re-opening the
> salasaga project).
>

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